The Fort

‘I do say so,’ the young officer said enthusiastically, then stopped suddenly and pointed into the underbrush. ‘There!’

‘A rebel, sir?’ McClure asked dutifully, seeing nothing worthy of note among the pines.

‘Is it a thrush?’

‘Ah,’ McClure saw what had interested the paymaster and looked more closely, ‘it’s a bird, sir.’

‘Strangely, Sergeant, I was apprised of that fact,’ the lieutenant said happily. ‘Note the breast, Sergeant.’

Sergeant McClure dutifully noted the bird’s breast. ‘Red, sir?’

‘Red indeed. I congratulate you, Sergeant, and does it not put you in mind of our native robin? But this fellow is larger, much larger! Handsome fellow, isn’t he?’

‘Want me to shoot him, sir?’ McClure asked.

‘No, Sergeant, I merely wish you to admire his plumage. A thrush is wearing his majesty’s red coat, would you not consider that an omen of good-fortune?’

‘Oh, aye, sir, I would.’

‘I detect in you, Sergeant, a lack of zeal.’ The eighteen-year-old lieutenant smiled to show he was not serious. He was a tall lad, a full head above the stocky sergeant, and had a round, eager and mobile face, a smile quick as lightning, and shrewdly observant eyes. His coat was cut from expensive scarlet cloth, faced with black and bright with buttons that were rumoured to be made of the finest gold. Lieutenant John Moore was not wealthy, he was a doctor’s son, but everyone knew he was a friend of the young Duke’s, and the Duke was said to be richer than the next ten richest men in all Scotland, and a rich friend, as everyone also knew, was the next best thing to being wealthy oneself. The Duke of Hamilton was so rich that he had paid all the expenses of raising the 82nd Regiment of Foot, buying them uniforms, muskets and bayonets, and rumour said his grace could probably afford to raise another ten such regiments without even noticing the expense. ‘Onwards,’ Moore said, ‘onwards, ever onwards!’

The six privates, all from the Lowlands of Scotland, did not move. They just gazed at Lieutenant Moore as though he were a strange species from some far-off heathen country.

‘Onwards!’ Moore called again, striding fast once more through the trees. The fog muffled the harsh sound of the axes coming from where Brigadier McLean’s men were clearing the ridge so that their planned fort would have open fields of fire. The 82nd’s picquet, meanwhile, was climbing a gentle slope that levelled onto a wide plateau of thick undergrowth and dark firs. Moore trampled through the brush, then again stopped abruptly. ‘There,’ he said, pointing, ‘Thalassa, Thalassa.’

‘The lassie?’ McClure asked.

‘You have not read Xenophon’s Anabasis, Sergeant?’ Moore asked in mock horror.

‘Is that the one after Leviticus, sir?’

Moore smiled. ‘Thalassa, Sergeant, Thalassa,’ he said in mock reproof, ‘was the cry of the ten thousand when at last, after their long march, and after their dark ordeals, they came to the sea. That’s what it means! The sea! The sea! And they shouted for joy because they saw their safety in the gentle heaves of its bosom.’

‘Its bosom, sir,’ McClure echoed, peering down a sudden steep bluff, thick with trees, to glimpse the cold sea through the foliage and beneath the drifting fog. ‘It’s not very bosomy, sir.’

‘And it is across that water, Sergeant, from their lair in the black lands of Boston, that the enemy will come. They will arrive in their hundreds and in their thousands, they will prowl like the dark hordes of Midian, they will descend upon us like the Assyrian!’

‘Not if this fog lasts, sir,’ McClure said, ‘the buggers will get lost, sir.’

Moore, for once, said nothing. He was gazing down the bluff. It was not quite a cliff, but no man could climb it easily. An attacker would need to drag himself up the two hundred feet by pulling on the straggly saplings, and a man using his hands to keep his footing could not use his musket. The beach, just visible, was brief and stony.

‘But are the buggers coming, sir?’ McClure asked.

‘We cannot say,’ Moore said distractedly.

‘But the brigadier thinks so, sir?’ McClure asked anxiously. The privates listened, glancing nervously from the short sergeant to the tall officer.

‘We must assume, Sergeant,’ Moore said airily, ‘that the wretched creatures will resent our presence. We make life difficult for them. By establishing ourselves in this land of soured milk and bitter honey we deny their privateers the harbours they require for their foul depredations. We are a thorn in their side, we are inconvenient, we are a challenge to their quietude.’

McClure frowned and scratched his forehead. ‘So you’re saying the buggers will come, sir?’

‘I bloody hope so,’ Moore said with sudden vehemence.

‘Not here, sir,’ McClure said confidently. ‘Too steep.’

‘They’ll want to land somewhere in range of their ships’ cannons,’ Moore said.

‘Cannons, sir?’

‘Big metal tubes which expel balls, Sergeant.’

‘Oh, thank you, sir. I was wondering, sir,’ McClure said with a smile.

Moore tried and failed to suppress a smile. ‘We shall be plied with shot, Sergeant, have no doubt of that. And I’ve no doubt ships could spatter this slope with cannon fire, but how would men climb it into our musket fire? Yet even so, let’s hope they land here. No troops could climb this slope if we’re waiting at the top, eh? By God, Sergeant, we’ll make a fine cull of the rebellious bastards!’

‘And so we will, sir,’ McClure said loyally, though in his sixteen years of service he had become used to brash young officers whose confidence exceeded their experience. Lieutenant John Moore, the sergeant decided, was another such, yet McClure liked him. The paymaster possessed an easy authority, rare in a man so young, and he was reckoned to be a fair officer who cared about his troops. Even so, McClure thought, John Moore would have to learn some sense or else die young.

‘We shall slaughter them,’ Moore said enthusiastically, then held out his hand. ‘Your musket, Sergeant.’

McClure handed the officer his musket and watched as Moore laid a guinea on the ground. ‘The soldier who can fire faster than me will be rewarded with the guinea,’ Moore said. ‘Your mark is that half-rotted tree canted on the slope, you see it?’

‘Aim at the dead bent tree.’ McClure explained to the privates. ‘Sir?’

‘Sergeant?’

‘Won’t the sound of muskets alarm the camp, sir?’

‘I warned the brigadier we’d be shooting. Sergeant, your cartridge box, if you please.’

‘Be quick, lads,’ McClure encouraged his men. ‘Let’s take the officer’s money!’

‘You may load and prime,’ Moore said. ‘I propose to fire five shots. If any of you manage five before me, then you will take the guinea. Imagine, gentlemen, that a horde of malodorous rebels are climbing the bluff, then do the king’s work and send the wretches to hell.’

The muskets were loaded; the powder, wadding and shot were rammed down the barrels, the locks were primed and the frizzens closed. The clicks of the flints being cocked seemed oddly loud in the fog-shrouded morning.

‘Gentlemen of the 82nd,’ Moore demanded grandly, ‘are you ready?’

‘The buggers are ready, sir,’ McClure said.

‘Present!’ Moore ordered, ‘fire!’

Seven muskets coughed, blasting evil-smelling powder smoke that was far thicker than the swirling fog. The smoke lingered as birds fled through the thick trees and gulls called from the water. Through the echo of the shots McClure heard the balls ripping through leaves and clattering on the stones of the small beach. The men were tearing open their next cartridges with their teeth, but Lieutenant Moore was already ahead. He had primed the musket, closed the frizzen and now dropped the heavy stock to the ground and poured in the powder. He pushed the cartridge paper and ball into the muzzle, whipped the ramrod up, slid it down hard, pulled it free with the ringing sound of metal on metal, then jammed the ramrod into the turf, tossed the gun up to his shoulder, cocked, and fired.

No one had yet beaten Lieutenant John Moore. Major Dunlop had timed Moore once and, with disbelief, had announced that the lieutenant had fired five shots inside sixty seconds. Most men could manage three shots a minute with a clean musket, a few could shoot four rounds, but the doctor’s son, friend of a duke, could fire five. Moore had been trained in musketry by a Prussian, and as a boy he had practised and practised, perfecting the essential soldier’s skill, and so certain was he of his ability that, as he loaded the last two shots, he did not even bother to look at his borrowed weapon, but instead smiled wryly at Sergeant McClure. ‘Five!’ Moore announced, his ears ringing with the explosions. ‘Did any man defeat me, Sergeant?’

‘No, sir. Private Neill managed three shots, sir, the rest did two.’

‘Then my guinea is safe,’ Moore said, scooping it up.